Sunday, May 21, 2006

IT'S A LOVE SUPERMARKET

I propose applying some cunning tricks used by retailers to internet dating sites, thereby improving the internet dating customer experience.

BOGOF, aka Buy One, Get One Free

Do I really need to explain this?

Loyalty Cards (1)

You get points for every date you go on. After, say, 10 dates, the site gives you free access to all the pretty boys they've been keeping for themselves in a secret file in the office.

Loyalty Cards (2)

You get points for every message you get. Then something happens. Don't know what. Free membership or something. Cake, perhaps.

Sale

All the mingers' profiles get bigged-up for a week in a bid to shift them off the site and into a relationship, therefore improving the overall customer experience.

Computers for Schools Vouchers

Collect virtual 'tokens' as you date, and help build a programme that introduces internet dating to schools.

Obviously this is a brilliant idea as it is inevitable that in 5 years you'll be seen as a freak if you didn't meet your partner online, so let's equip the kidz now with all the information they need (how to interpret profile photographs; what profiles actually mean, etc - see May archive). Oh, and you'll be giving something back to society. Nice one.

Marketing

Yes, I know they do it, but they could do it better. What about nicking Waitrose's line? 'Quality Totty, Honestly Priced'? And I'm sure we could do something with that Asda arse-slap.

Direct-To-Door Delivery

You organise your date, then the site brings them round in a van for you to look at before you commit to 30 quid's worth of drinks, a £20 cab fare home and having to beat them off with a shitty stick when they try and stick their hand up your skirt after the third Manhattan. If the one you've chosen isn't available, they'll bring round 'the nearest equivalent'.

Premium Range

'Finest' or 'Simply the Best' - either is fine. These are the particularly comely ladies and gentlemen the sites run special checks on, and are guaranteed mentally sound, mainly fed on organic free range food, clean and intelligent. They also come with a bit of traceability info, i.e. references from 3 ex boyfriends or girlfriends.

They cost a bit more but the quality's really worth it.

Own Brand Range

Average men and women who want to live in a Barrett home, enjoy Eamonn Holmes' National Lottery show and buy all their clothes from Next.

Customer Services

You phone up the site to see if they've got any 6ft freelance writers with blue eyes who are good at kissing and making biscuits in stock. They say yes, then you get put on hold and transferred to Bakery.